Humph.

Sad news. On Thursday I had a little email from the BBC’s audience people to say that the new series of I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue, which we’d been hoping to finally make it to see, had had to be postponed, because much-loved host, Humphrey Lyttelton, had been taken into hospital. Saturday morning, it was announced that the 86-year-old had died.

He’d been hosting the self-styled antidote to panel games for some 36 years, but he’d been presenting his legendary jazz show for over forty. It was only last month, after four decades of being the UK’s foremost jazz voice, he finally retired from the programme. Fundamental changes like that do seem to have a funny effect on people, which is why I’d wondered how retirement would suit him – but I suspect he’d say that the thing that really had a funny effect on him was an aortic aneurysm.

And he was funny. Obituaries are famously humourless things, so I won’t try to describe him – it would sound far too respectful. Comedy is like sex, I think – describing it always sounds like you’re rather missing the point. Anyone who listened to ISIHAC will have Humph’s style clearly in mind – he was a dry, hilarious warmth. He kind of made it the favourite radio feature in our house. Though, to be fair, I have no idea what he was like in bed.

Weirdly, if you listen to early recordings of the show, it sounds just the same. One or two bereavements aside, it’s the same cast. Listening again to an episode from 1975 a little while ago, I found it hard to believe that the intervening years had seen such fundamental changes to British society as humourless Thatcherism, Alternative Comedy and digital broadcasting; the gags were that old. Humph himself was the only thing to have noticeably aged in voice over the years – but this just made him all the funnier. The more he sounded like a venerable elder statesman, the more jolly effective were his sudden filthy double entendres.

The thing is, all this is enough to mourn the chap and when you hear friends’ testimonies of him, the man was clearly a rare joy. But it’s only in more recent times it’s been dawning on me what a giant talent he was.

He was considered one of the greatest UK jazz musicians of all time. But he wasn’t ‘just’ a horn player – was a prolific composer and a fantastic bandleader, performed with his group until mere weeks before he died. And as if jazz musician, composer, performer and broadcaster weren’t enough accolades, he was also a writer and cartoonist. And, of course, raconteur and bon viveur.

In short, a ruddy inspiration. Funny, talented, knowledgeable and self-deprecating.

If you’re interested, here’s his obit at the Beeb:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3477089.stm
I wonder if Mrs Trellis will send in a card.

Cheesy.

This is groovy. Had an excited email from Gellan pointing me at this:

http://www.utalkmarketing.com/pages/Article.aspx?ArticleID=10122&Title;=Wyke%20Farms%20ad%20wins%20People%E2%80%99s%20Choice

Thinking Juice’s little TV as for Wyke Farms has won a People’s Choice award, up against people with rather more budget. You can watch the ad and its rivals from the link. Nice one, G.

Why am I posting this? Rather pleasingly, Momo:timo wrote the music – a nice little tune to whistle while you’re carving the Simply Gorgeous extra mature. True, it’s hard to hear a note of it on YouTube, but the full thing is on the Timo website, for you dedicated cheese fans.

Doesn’t help me knuckle down, this. I’ve spent the week trying to develop a reasonably monstrous website for one client – and now I’m at Friday morning with a half-finished website and a couple of unstarted jobs I was planning to start on Monday. And all I really want to do is get back on the album. Swing the sign round from Typo to Timo and enjoy a Friday talking silly voices through a harmoniser. Way to run a business.

But I had a slightly hefty tea-time presentation of said website lastnight, that made me miss circuits and open some wine instead – so this morning was never going to be an early starter, was it? Mind you, I had the easier time. In the same meeting, as part of the wider brand development we’re partnering on for this, Gellan had to present some weighty and sometimes tricky-to-hear research. Then I got to stand up and say: ‘here’s your new website – as you can see, it’s very pretty. Any questions?’ [ finger pistol ]

Leeeetle more to it than that, obviously. But as I ponder the schedule for next week, the good thing, responsibility fans, is that Momo has an interesting spread of projects coming up.

Hopefully enough to keep us in cheese.

Barry and George.

Today is, apparently, St George’s day. But my mind’s on ol’ Bazzer.

I may be an Englishman, but I never remember this date – 23rd April. Who knows this? And when they say that less people celebrate the nation’s patron saint than celebrate Guy Fawkes night, I wonder who on earth is celebrating our basically-apocryphal dragon slayer AT ALL. And how are they doing it? We don’t parade giant paper dragons down the street, or enjoy traditional dragon soup recipes, overpriced and pre-packed by Tesco, in fact we don’t have ANYthing. What am I supposed to do to get all Englishy today? No one’s equipped me. Who am I, someone?

And anyway, it’s the big drag-on I’m thinking of. The presidential primaries in America.

So Hillers fights back again. It’s a head-scratcher, isn’t it? Tough bird in the one corner, gives the impression of being willing to say anything out of desperation to be nominated, but ruddy hell is tenacious. Then golden boy Obama in the other corner, all the qualifications the world is willing for a new US president, but not a sausage about how he’s going to inject life into America’s aimless economy. Hmm.

Lord only knows why this keeps my attention so much; I know as much about my local council elections when they come round as I do about St George’s day, but the surreal race for the Democratic nomination across the Atlantic has me hooked. Or is it speared?

How did George kill the sodding dragon?

Having the horn.

Oh, boy, do I.

The economy may be taking a more theatrical dive than a Premier League striker, rolling around with the kind of over-acted agony clear enough to be seen from the back tiers of Wembley, but as we all know, one of the best tonics for a flagging game is a loud bit of trumpet karaoki.

So, before my business is stretchered off indefinitely, I thought I’d stir the blood with something so exciting I could barely sit down.

I’m easily pleased, obviously. And I’m definitely in that over-excited, can’t-see-it-properly stage. But there’s a particular track I’ve had cooking for a while that reeeeally needed a horn section. Thanks to Kev putting me in touch with his good, and formerly-professional trumpet player, John… I am grinning from ear to ringing ear.

I did warn the neighbours, but it was probably just as well they were out that afternoon. A trumpet is a loud thing. A LOUD thing. But I felt it was allowed.

I may calm down when I go back to the mix and find I can’t in fact stop it sounding like a school band. But right now, I SO have the horn. And so does Mark, who’s practicing drums for the piece, entitled Disfunkshun.

How do I concentrate on other deadlines with the horn? The horn is all I can think about.

Ah. A cold shower of client emails. Okay. Calm now.

:o)

Crash.

Don’t know if you saw any of the interview with the parents of Indira Swann, Greg and Louise. They were giving testimony to their daughter, killed along with four other young women in a tragically simple coach crash in Ecuador.

We were stopped short by their words. The couple’s dedication to encouragement in the middle of such obvious agony was a kind of wisdom too heroic for words. There was a visible pause in the Channel 4 News studio, after the tape.

Seize the day. Do the best you can with how long you’ve got. Don’t stop learning about the world. Accidents happen.

Accidents happen. Greg seemed to wring the words out of himself. The determination of conviction.

—

Getting on for a decade ago now, two young friends of our family in Sussex were killed in a car accident in Australia. Two others with them survived. I remember the morning news waking me up with the story and I just kind of suspected it was them.

I didn’t know them. Met maybe once or twice, I can’t remember. But they were central to Caroline’s sister’s family of friends, and watching everyone in the community try to come to terms with such a pointless, recreational loss was silencing. I don’t know what I’d do, if one of my adopted family didn’t come home from a holiday. Build a shrine, probably.

Tonight’s brief interview reminded me how you never know what life can grow out of the jagged fractures of a crash. How life likes to show up where it shouldn’t be. I wonder for them. But, as Stephen Lawrence’s mother, Doreen, said at the opening of the centre that fights to creatively equip young people facing poverty, bearing his name in St Johns, “I’d swap it all in a heartbeat for Stephen.”

Just thinking of all five families.